Six men endure Mars flight simulation experiment

MOSCOW -- Russian engineers broke a red wax seal and six men emerged from a metal hatch after 105 days of isolation in a mock spacecraft, still smiling after testing the stresses that space travelers may face on the journey to Mars.

Sergei Ryazansky, the captain of the six-man crew, told reporters at a Moscow research institute near the Kremlin on Tuesday that the most difficult thing was knowing that instead of making the 172-million mile (276-million kilometer) journey they were locked in a windowless module of metal canisters the size of railway cars.

The men, chosen from 6,000 applicants, were paid euro15,000 ($20,987) each to be sealed up in the mock space capsule since March 31— cut off almost entirely from the outside world.

They had no television or Internet and their only link to the outside world was communications with the experiment's controllers — who also monitored them via TV cameras — and an internal e-mail system. Communications with the outside world had 20-minute delays to imitate a real space flight.

Each crewmember had his personal cabin. The interiors had hatches similar to a submarine's and were paneled in faux wood according to Soviet style of the 1970s, when the structure was originally built for space-related experiments.

The module's entrance was locked with a padlock and red sealing wax and twine — the kind that Soviet government bureaucrats have used for years to close up their offices at the end of the work day.

Common facilities included a gym and a small garden, and the modules were equipped with the new European and Russian exercise and training equipment for biomedical research. The crew also specially prepared meals and used toilets closely resembling those on the space station.

Some veteran space explorers belittled the value of the experiment, but its backers at the Russian and European space agencies insist it will only move humans closer to a real mission.

"What we're doing is important for future missions exploring the solar system," said Simonetta Di Pipo, director of the human space flight program at the European Space Agency.